第58章 PART SECOND(24)

"I don't suppose you intend to go out to the gas country?""No,"said Miss Vance,amused."Not that I shouldn't like to go.""What a daring spirit!You ought to be on the staff of 'Every Other Week,'"said Beaton.

"The staff-Every Other Week?What is it?""The missing link;the long-felt want of a tie between the Arts and the Dollars."Beaton gave her a very picturesque,a very dramatic sketch of the theory,the purpose,and the personnel of the new enterprise.

Miss Vance understood too little about business of any kind to know how it differed from other enterprises of its sort.She thought it was delightful;she thought Beaton must be glad to be part of it,though he had represented himself so bored,so injured,by Fulkerson's insisting upon having him."And is it a secret?Is it a thing not to be spoken of?""'Tutt'altro'!Fulkerson will be enraptured to have it spoken of in society.He would pay any reasonable bill for the advertisement.""What a delightful creature!Tell him it shall all be spent in charity.""He would like that.He would get two paragraphs out of the fact,and your name would go into the 'Literary Notes'of all the newspapers.""Oh,but I shouldn't want my name used!"cried the girl,half horrified into fancying the situation real.

"Then you'd better not say anything about 'Every Other Week'.Fulkerson is preternaturally unscrupulous."March began to think so too,at times.He was perpetually suggesting changes in the make-up of the first number,with a view to its greater vividness of effect.One day he came and said:"This thing isn't going to have any sort of get up and howl about it,unless you have a paper in the first number going for Bevans's novels.Better get Maxwell to do it.""Why,I thought you liked Bevans's novels?""So I did;but where the good of 'Every Other Week'is concerned I am a Roman father.The popular gag is to abuse Bevans,and Maxwell is the man to do it.There hasn't been a new magazine started for the last three years that hasn't had an article from Maxwell in its first number cutting Bevans all to pieces.If people don't see it,they'll think 'Every Other Week'is some old thing."March did not know whether Fulkerson was joking or not.He suggested,"Perhaps they'll think it's an old thing if they do see it.""Well,get somebody else,then;or else get Maxwell to write under an assumed name.Or--I forgot!He'll be anonymous under our system,anyway.Now there ain't a more popular racket for us to work in that first number than a good,swinging attack on Bevans.People read his books and quarrel over 'em,and the critics are all against him,and a regular flaying,with salt and vinegar rubbed in afterward,will tell more with people who like good old-fashioned fiction than anything else.

I like Bevans's things,but,dad burn it!when it comes to that first number,I'd offer up anybody.""What an immoral little wretch you are,Fulkerson!"said March,with a laugh.

Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous about the attack on the novelist."Say!"he called out,gayly,"what should you think of a paper defending the late lamented system of slavery'?""What do you mean,Fulkerson?"asked March,with a puzzled smile.

Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk,and pushed himself back,but kept his balance to the eye by canting his hat sharply forward."There's an old cock over there at the widow's that's written a book to prove that slavery was and is the only solution of the labor problem.He's a Southerner.""I should imagine,"March assented.

"He's got it on the brain that if the South could have been let alone by the commercial spirit and the pseudophilanthropy of the North,it would have worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition for the laborer,in which he would have been insured against want,and protected in all his personal rights by the state.He read the introduction to me last night.I didn't catch on to all the points--his daughter's an awfully pretty girl,and I was carrying that fact in my mind all the time,too,you know--but that's about the gist of it.""Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity?"said March.

"Exactly!What a mighty catchy title,Neigh?Look well on the title-page."

"Well written?"

"I reckon so;I don't know.The Colonel read it mighty eloquently.""It mightn't be such bad business,"said March,in a muse."Could you get me a sight of it without committing yourself?""If the Colonel hasn't sent it off to another publisher this morning.He just got it back with thanks yesterday.He likes to keep it travelling.""Well,try it.I've a notion it might be a curious thing.""Look here,March,"said Fulkerson,with the effect of taking a fresh hold;"I wish you could let me have one of those New York things of yours for the first number.After all,that's going to be the great card.""I couldn't,Fulkerson;I couldn't,really.I want to philosophize the material,and I'm too new to it all yet.I don't want to do merely superficial sketches.""Of course!Of course!I understand that.Well,I don't want to hurry you.Seen that old fellow of yours yet?I think we ought to have that translation in the first number;don't you?We want to give 'em a notion of what we're going to do in that line.""Yes,"said March;"and I was going out to look up Lindau this morning.

I've inquired at Maroni's,and he hasn't been there for several days.

I've some idea perhaps he's sick.But they gave me his address,and I'm going to see.""Well,that's right.We want the first number to be the keynote in every way."March shook his head."You can't make it so.The first number is bound to be a failure always,as far as the representative character goes.